George

I got a late start but decided I would take part in Wet Canvas’ All Media Event. It’s a pretty interesting activity. Reference photos are posted over the weekend and you have a half an hour to select one and two hours to finish your piece (unless you don’t, and then you can post it as a work in progress.) This took me more than an hour, but less than an hour and a half, somewhere in there. I was working quickly – it’s little more than a sketch, really, but it was fun to do. You can execute your piece of work in any medium you want. I need practice in painting people so I picked this one and changed the background and attitude of the head to suit myself.

As you can see, I tilted his head differently and changed the eye direction so it looked somewhat less like a snapshot. I also gave him a little more defined chin. One of the challenges of painting in this way is that with the limitation of two hours, there is a temptation to cut corners at the drawing stage, which is where capturing a likeness begins. If I’d been painting this in acrylic, gouache or digitally (in some opaque media) I would have slimmed his left jowl, for example, and made some other changes. As an exercise, I’m satisfied with it as my main objective was to work on modeling a head, staying loose and getting interesting skin tones

I was too tardy to be included, but I certainly enjoyed seeing all the others.

Anna, to answer your question, I painted it in about three layers, with drying in between – but you can see the “bloom” on the right where I started painting over damp too soon.
The dominant colors here are burnt sienna and Payne’s gray